The Darkest Corners
by Akanue
Summary: In the darkest corners of the mind lurk the things we wish to forget. One night, Seto Kaiba begins to wonder if he's going mad.


Title: The Darkest Corners

Author: Akanue

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh!

Rating: T

Warning(s): Psychological horror and implied/referenced child abuse.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! or its characters. They belong to Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, TV Tokyo, and other licensors and distributors. This is a not-for-profit fan work.

Summary: In the darkest corners of the mind lurk the things we wish to forget. One night, Seto Kaiba begins to wonder if he's going mad.

Author's Note: Been wanting to write this for a while and since today is Kaiba's birthday (Sorry Seto, it's not a very good birthday present, is it?) I figured I'd post it. I'll leave it up to your imagination whether or not Gozaburo's really there.

The Darkest Corners

Shadows lurked in the darkest corners of the office not because Kaiba didn't have lamps or an overhead light, but rather because he hadn't bothered to turn them on. Mokuba had commented several times about how his brother was going to ruin his eyesight and should at least take a moment to turn the lights on, but being so engrossed in the ideas that were swirling through his head, Kaiba had forgotten, as per usual.

It was late at night and thunder was rolling in across the horizon, but Seto Kaiba was awake as usual, up late in his home office, working away at an idea for the next game design Kaiba Corporation had announced for a release date three years in the future. Mokuba was sound asleep downstairs and well-paid security guards roamed the halls and grounds of the Kaiba Estate, making it a rather typical summer evening.

It began when Kaiba heard a thump near the door, which he had left open because he didn't expect to be disturbed at midnight. "Isono?" he asked, wondering if his bodyguard and assistant had entered without knocking, though Kaiba had to admit that would have been unusual. He glanced up from his glowing computer screen, but no one was there.

His eyes narrowing, Kaiba stood from his swivel chair and strode over to investigate. The door had a heavy stopper pressing it against the wall, so it couldn't have moved to thump against the wall, even if there had been a shift in air pressure. Now even more skeptical, he glanced out the door and down each hallway. It was dark and he couldn't see very far, but there was no one in sight.

Seto Kaiba was not one to be easily spooked. In fact, the last time he remembered being actually scared was when he'd been in elementary school and his parents had been alive. He'd ventured into a haunted house by himself and panicked when a fake zombie had lunged at him. His mother and father had comforted him afterwards, but it had taken him a long time to dismiss it as the silly incident it was. For the long years after his parents' deaths Kaiba had been forced, by both Gozaburo and his own stubborn, prideful nature, to convince himself that he didn't feel fear.

But he still shut the door before returning to his desk.

For the next fifteen minutes the only sound in the room was the taps of Kaiba's fingers against the keys of his computer. Time ticked itself away on the clock as Kaiba, involved in his work, fell entirely oblivious to the outside world.

When he hit a snag in his flow of creative thought, he finally pulled his eyes away from the screen and back to reality. He made note that the clock's red digital display read 1:25 in the morning. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose with a hand. Well aware that he'd grown tired, he seriously began contemplating if he should go down to the kitchen and make himself a pot of coffee in order to continue with his work.

He glanced up and his throat closed up. A figure stood in the center of his office that wasn't Isono or even Mokuba. It was someone Seto Kaiba never expected to see again.

The man who had adopted him all those years ago and raised him to be his heir. Gozaburo Kaiba.

Kaiba stood so violently he almost knocked his chair over. For a brief moment an even more terrifying thought than Gozaburo coming back from the dead crossed his mind—that he had begun hallucinating. But no, the figure in front of him seemed to be completely real. Kaiba could even smell the cigar smoke that had long ago permeated into the man's expensive suit.

"You're dead," Kaiba said, barely managing to keep his voice even. "I was there. I saw you jump out that window."

"Then how can I still be here?" Gozaburo said with a calm smirk. "I'll never leave you, Seto. Whether or not I'm actually here."

The darkness of the room and the extreme shock caused Kaiba to momentarily lose control and fling his stapler at the intruder. But instead of striking flesh it crashed into the glass display case that had remained empty since Gozaburo's death. The glass shattered and rained down upon the carpet.

Kaiba felt his muscles tense as he became aware of Gozaburo's breathing behind him. How had the man moved so quickly? Certainly, there had been many times when Gozaburo had moved so fast as to be unavoidable by a scared child Seto, wanting nothing more than to get away. But this time he had simply vanished and then reappeared, like a ghost.

Perhaps that's what he was.

In a moment, all of the memories of life under this cruel man came rushing back to Kaiba. The countless beatings with a switch or a riding crop from either one of Gozaburo's servants or Gozaburo himself, the endless lessons that lasted until the middle of the night, the humiliation and shame of not being able to do a damn thing about any of it, the many, many threats of being sent back to the orphanage, that desperate _need_ to please the man in spite of everything... It was all Kaiba could do to keep his focus on the present and not on the past.

As Gozaburo's cruel laugh rang throughout the room and thunder crashed outside, Seto Kaiba began to feel the last of his sanity slip away.


End file.
